# Block content not showing

**URL:** <https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/block-content-not-showing/40082>\
**Category:** Templates & Frontend\
**Created:** [March 31, 2025, 5:51pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/block-content-not-showing/40082 "2025-03-31T17:51:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AlyWork](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/alywork/32/27871_2.png) [@AlyWork](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/AlyWork)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 5:51pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/block-content-not-showing/40082/1 "2025-03-31T17:51:32Z")

</div>

I am creating an SOP site for my team and am trying to set up a global navbar so I don’t have to keep updating every .html as new processes are added. I am hosting this site on github for now (pending approval from the powers that be to host it internally). I had it working using base.html and home.html while following a tutorial, but kept getting lost as this is not the naming convention I am used to and the content was not displaying on github.I switched to index.html and navbar.html and now I’m getting a blank screen. It’s very possible I missed updating a path or view or something, I’m very new to Django. Let me know if you need any other info!

**Here’s my index.html:**

```auto
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head><meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.3.2/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha384-T3c6CoIi6uLrA9TneNEoa7RxnatzjcDSCmG1MXxSR1GAsXEV/Dwwykc2MPK8M2HN" crossorigin="anonymous">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="">
    <title>DART Homepage</title>
</head>
<body>

    {% block navbar %}{% endblock %}

    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.3.2/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" integrity="sha384-C6RzsynM9kWDrMNeT87bh95OGNyZPhcTNXj1NW7RuBCsyN/o0jlpcV8Qyq46cDfL" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
</body>
</html>

```

**A snippet of navbar.html:**

```auto
{% extends 'index.html' %}

{% block navbar %}
<nav class="navbar navbar-expand-lg bg-body-tertiary" id="nav">
{% endblock %}

```

**Structure:**

 ![Capture](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/uploads/djangoproject/original/3X/5/d/5d7cb3fe4db73936d7076289b4a45a5b00a209db.png)

**HowTo\views.py**

```auto
from django.views.generic import TemplateView

class HomePageView(TemplateView):
    template_name = 'index.html'

class NavbarView(TemplateView):
    template_name = 'navbar.html'

```

**HowTo\urls.py**

```from
from .views import HomePageView

app_name = 'HowTo'

urlpatterns = [
    path('', HomePageView.as_view(), name="Home")
]

```

**DARTHomepage\urls.py**

```auto
from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path
from django.conf.urls import include

from HowTo import urls as HowTo_urls

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('', include(HowTo_urls, namespace='HowTo'))
]

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![KenWhitesell](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/kenwhitesell/32/280_2.png) [@KenWhitesell](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/KenWhitesell)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 6:28pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/block-content-not-showing/40082/2 "2025-03-31T18:28:37Z")

</div>

Where and how are you calling your `NavbarView`?

And, you may want to read the thread at [How can I render multiple views in one template](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/how-can-i-render-multiple-views-in-one-template/15915)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![philgyford](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/philgyford/32/14295_2.png) [@philgyford](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/philgyford)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 11:28am UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/block-content-not-showing/40082/3 "2025-04-01T11:28:31Z")

</div>

I’m going to guess that you’re trying to include `navbar.html` within `index.html` where you have `{% block navbar %}{% endblock %}`? If I’m wrong you can ignore the rest of this 🙂

* * *

In Django templates, if you want to do that you should:

1. In `index.html` replace `{% block navbar %}{% endblock %}` with `{% include "navbar.html" %}`
2. Remove `{% extends 'index.html' %}`, `{% block navbar %}` and `{% endblock %}` from `navbar.html`
3. Remove the `NavbarView()` from `HowTo_views.py` - that view isn’t being used, as far as I can tell.

That should mean that when you view the URL `/` the `HomePageView()` will be called, rendering the `index.html` template. This will include the `navbar.html` template in the correct position.

* * *

However… this is fine for one page, but when you add others, that need different templates, then you’re going to either duplicate all of the boilerplate HTML (like `<head>` etc) in `index.html` in the other templates, or else move that boilerplate into “include” files and include them in the new templates.

It would be best to try to get your head around _extending_ templates, which is what was happening with the `base.html` and `home.html` from the tutorial you were doing. It’s sort of the inverse of “including” files, which can make it hard to understand when it’s a new concept to you.

The idea is to have a `base.html` template which contains all of the common bits of your site’s HTML: `<head>` etc, but also often things like navbars, headers, footers, etc. The template doesn’t have to be called `base.html`, but that’s the convention.

Within that base template you have “blocks” which are like slots into which other templates – that _extend_ from `base.html` – insert their own content.

So your `base.html` might have `{% block main %}{% endblock %}` tags where the main content of each page would go.

Then a view will render a template for its page. Such as `home.html`. This would look something like:

```html
{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block main %}
<p>This is the main content of my page</p>
{% endblock %}

```

So that’s indicating which base template it’s extending. Because you could have different base templates – for example if you had different overall layouts or designs for different parts of your site.

And then it has the HTML that goes into the “main” slot in that `base.html` template.

You can have lots of blocks in a base template.

And non-base templates can also contain blocks if other templates extend from them.

_And_ you can still `{% include ... %}` other partial templates.

But this way of _extending_ a base template is a good way to structure things, and is used in nearly all Django projects, so it’s worth persevering with.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AlyWork](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/alywork/32/27871_2.png) [@AlyWork](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/AlyWork)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2025, 12:35pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/block-content-not-showing/40082/4 "2025-04-03T12:35:20Z")

</div>

Thank you so much for the detailed response. The navbar is displaying now! I’ve found a couple tutorials on how extending templates works as well. If you’ve ever considered creating your own course, I think you’d be a great teacher!